Children have developed skills in drawing and printmaking which they would not normally have had the opportunity to do in this way. The artist brought new ideas and methods of working which we wouldn’t normally have used. Children found the visual aspect of evolution exciting and inspirational and the images they looked at and created themselves deepened their interest and knowledge of the subject. We have also gathered ideas for future art/science links to enrich our children’s learning.

Some children have definitely increased in confidence in their creative thinking skills and the project revealed certain children as having definite artistic abilities and a real enjoyment of the subject. The individual books that the children produced became quite personal to each child and enabled them to develop their own visual ideas and styles.

The children enjoyed the opportunity of working with a ‘real’ artist and are very proud of what they have achieved. They have already shared their work with the rest of the school in an assembly.

Lee Miller and Gail Hallas

Project:  Printmaking – A Play on Evolution
Participants:  Year 3 pupils
Partnering with:  Mill Lane Primary
Artist:  Shelley Burgoyne
Science topic:  Biology, Evolution and Inheritance

We have chosen to focus on changes and adaptations that happen over time in the animal and human world. The focus on Evolution gives us a very strong link to the Change theme. In our research we will look at the processes linked to fossil making and incorporate them into our experimentation with different media. The changing nature of animals from water to land will be reflected in a series of T-Shirt images which will be used as part of a performance to bring some of the themes we’ve been exploring to life. Our planned starting point will be to print on paper made during previous science experimentation sessions.

See some of the pictures from our visit to MOSI on our website here.

See some of the pictures from our Change Project on our website here.

See our video wearing the T-Shirts we made here (large file).

We got off to a great start and had a really good time. There was so much energy and enthusiasm!   We are focussing on changes in our world through evolution. We have started to use the drawings of fossils from our project books to develop some printmaking. We made drawings into the polyblock to prepare for printing. The effects we achieved were very interesting, especially printing the grey ink onto black paper. After we had done our first prints we made a second one to use as a book cover. These turned out really good as well. The whole thing was fun and we learnt a lot.

“Today an artist called Shelley came to our class. We started a project based on fossils, dinosaurs and evolution. She showed us how we can print by hand. She also gave some ideas about how to use our pens for drawing”

“I very much liked working with Shelley and it really was fun. It was fun doing the ink printing and drawing the dinosaurs and fossils. I drew a really good fossil in my little book that I made. I learnt a lot”

“I am looking forward to doing more of this and I made a list of resources – pen, polyblock, roller, palette knife, printing ink, paper x 2, pen or pencil. I really enjoyed it!”

“I loved it when Shelley came! We printed our drawings. My second best thing is that when we were drawing things you can poke polka-dots everywhere. My third best thing is that I had fun!”

Year 3 worked so hard today to gather images and ideas towards the Timeline. It’s quite hard thinking back to when the world began and how everything is created. We tried to imagine all the animals and where they fitted in evolution by standing in a very long line. We have created lots of drawings in our books. We also spent a moment preparing the T-Shirts for the printing next session. The drawings have turned out really well and we have a lot of variety to work with for our final piece next time. Well done everyone!

“I enjoyed watching Shelley draw with pastels and a special pencil on the camera”

“I liked drawing in my Evolution book”

“I enjoyed the timeline that we made all standing in a long line together”

“The pencils were really cool!”

An incredibly busy and dynamic session, we got such a lot done. We watched Shelley doing more drawing demonstrating and used these ideas in our books. These are now nearly finished. Everyone helped each other to do the T-shirt printing. This was an especially enjoyable part of the morning – to actually print our own designs on something we will wear! The first time we wear the T-shirts will be in the performance that we have devised about Evolution. This is going to be very exciting too. Year 3 have worked very hard during these sessions and school is planning to make a short film with all the students talking about their part in the Timeline. Well done to all!

“I enjoyed doing the printing and I love the leopard I made in polyblock. I have really enjoyed these lessons about evolution”

“Shelley, I loved everything! I loved the printing T-shirts especially today, drawing and sketching. We have had a lot of fun in our science and art and printing project”

“I liked doing the Timeline activity and it helped me see where the fossils and animals all went together in the world. I liked printing my fossil as well”

“I liked using the oil pastel and graphite and printing the T-shirts today”

“I am really excited to do our Timeline in our assembly and all wear our T-shirts for the performance”